Guess what people. Today is an exciting Saturday because
I’ve got the lovely and super talented Renee Knight – author of the thrilling Disclaimer - here to chat about all things bookish. Hurrah!
I have been excited about this post for quite a while, just so you know…

Renee! Hello!Thank-you so much for stopping by my little corner of the blogosphere;
grab a coffee and a piece of cake and make yourself at home – in fact it’s
imaginary cake, take two pieces.

Before we get started, let’s warm up with a quick fire
round.

Ready, steady, GO:

Coffee, tea or…?Ummmm....both

Favourite film?Can't commit but I loved 'The Lives of Others'...

Favourite book?I have a serious commitment problem
but recently read The Days of Abandonment
by Elena Ferrante and was stunned by it.

Summer or winter? Summer

Favourite Colour?Green

Last thing you ate?Penne with Bolognese

Dream holiday destination?Iceland (but I said I liked
summer...)

If you could jump to any point in history, who would you have
dinner with?Orson Welles before he dressed in
kaftans.

How do you like your steak?Medium

What are your pet peeves?People assuming authority when they
don't have it...

And now that’s done, on to the serious stuff –a serious
interview on a serious blog because clearly that’s what this is. Honest.

Let’s get started.

Firstly, I’ve read Disclaimer
and I loved it – I read it seven hours straight one Saturday because I couldn’t
put it down - but for anyone who’s yet to get acquainted with the book, can you
tell us a little bit about it?

A)Thank you so much
for that.Well, Disclaimer is
a psychological thriller about a woman who picks up a book from her bedside
table hoping it will lull her into sleep.Instead she discovers that she is a central character in the book and
that it describes an event from her past which she has kept secret, even from
her husband and son.As her life begins
to unravel we slowly discover what it is she has been hiding.

Where did the idea for Disclaimer come
from?

A) I had a written a novel before Disclaimer
which described an incident from my adolescence involving a good friend of
mine.As I neared the end of it I began
to think about how awful it would be if it was published and she read it and I
hadn't told her about it.Of course that
didn't happen.I sent it to her and got
her blessing and then no one wanted to publish it anyway.It gave me the idea for Disclaimer though so
nothing is wasted.

The book tells a story from the point of view of
two characters: Catherine and Stephen. Who did you find easiest to write, and
why?

A) I found Stephen easier to write because he was further
from me and so I had to dig deeper, which made him more satisfying and so
easier.

And is the answer to that question the same as the
answer to ‘who is your favourite character’ and if not, who is your favourite character?

A) No it's not the same answer. I like both Catherine and
Stephen equally.I think they are more
alike than they would at first appear.

If the book was a DVD what would the special
features be – are there any scenes that ended up ‘on the cutting room floor’
that you can share?

A) There weren't any particular scenes that were dumped
although everything was trimmed and edited many times.

Did the title come first, or last, or at some
point in the middle?

A) The title came last.Before I started writing I had a working title of 'Privacy' which I knew
I would never use, then I had 'Any Resemblance to Persons living or Dead...'
which I knew was a too long and then just before I finished I decided on
'Disclaimer'.

Tell us about how you write: do you prefer a loud
room or a quiet room; is your manuscript typed or handwritten, do you write
during set hours or as the word comes, and at home or some place else? What
works best?

A) I can't manage with noise around me, I become too easily
distracted, no music, no radio on in the background.I type straight into the computer but I might
work out the structure by hand first to force me to take it slowly and not rush
too much.I always work in the
mornings.If I leave it too late then
I've blown it, unless I'm editing - that I cando in the afternoons.I write at
home and I've now graduated from the kitchen table and have my own room.

What’s next for you? What are you working on now?

A) I'm working on the screenplay for Disclaimer and also my
second novel.

What’s the oddest thing on your desk? (I have a
Clanger on mine that makes a noise when you press its middle. I liberated it
from the desk of my boss….)

A) It's a fake gold duck's head with a blue glass eye
(rather evil-looking) and beak which opens and keeps papers together.I gave it to my dad when I was about
eight.It sat on his desk and now it
sits on mine.

What’s the best writing tip you’ve been given?

A) Take your time between drafts.Put it away and then leave it for as long as
you possibly can before reading and working on it again.It really made a difference to me - you see
things with a fresh eye.

What do you wish you got asked in these interviews
but never do?

A)To be honest with
you I haven't done many yet and so the questions feel fresh to me.I liked your one about the oddest thing on my
desk.

& because I’m always on the look out for new
book recs, what are you reading right now?

A)I'm reading The
Girl In The Red Coat by Kate Hamer which I am really enjoying.Thank you so for taking the time by the way
to read my book.So glad you enjoyed
it.

***

How much fun was that?! Thanks Renee, you’ve been a gem and I am SUPER excited at
the thought of both a Disclaimer film and your second novel. Hurrah for both of
those things.

Disclaimer was released on
April 9th so you know, go get a copy. It’s a really great read, I
promise. You can catch up with my review of it here (spoiler alert: I liked it
a lot.)

Well, I’ve never read any of Mark Henshaw’s stuff before this one, which
appealed to me for the main part I think because it’s set
(partly) in Japan,
and Japan
says to me Murakami, which in turn says to me yes. That was pretty much it, really, initially. I read the blurb (and did a small grin to
myself because the main chap’s called Jovert which obvs put me in mind of
Javert of Les Mis fame) and thought yep, this is a
book that sounds like me.

Which it was.

The premise is this: Retired police inspector Auguste Jovert
gets a letter from a woman who says she’s his daughter and then goes home to
find an old Japanese chap waiting in his apartment. He begins to tell Jovert a
story of love and loss, of friendship and betrayal and of The Snow Kimono from
the title. Professor Omura’s story is eerily similar to the tale of Jovert’s
own life – also a story of love and loss, friendship and betrayal and
ultimately built around a lie so you know, you have Omura's story and you have Jovert's story and you have all the parallels and it's all going on against these really excellent backdrops of Japan and Paris and Algeria.I know, sounds fascinating, right?

The thing about The Snow Kimono is it's interesting because it’s a story within a story; Jovert’s
story is playing out in the background as he spends time with Omura who tells
his story, essentially that of his life with this guy called Katsuo Ikeda (a writer, with the same initials as Kazuo Ishiguro. Also there is a character in the book called Mr. Ishiguro. An intentional tip-of-the-hat? I reckon so!), who
I guess you’d call Omura's friend but I’m not entirely sure that’s accurate.

It’s
a book that's all about seeing yourself how other people see you I think, at it’s heart, an
exploration of identity and perception and the reliability of a person
narrating his own story.

In Japan, we have a saying: If you want to see your life, you have to see it through the eyes of another.

There’s a lot going on in this book and I mean a lot. So many layers, it’s like one of those giant
delicious layer cakes.

Yum. Cake.

I am so bad at analogies good heavens, I just, those
cakes always look so delicious and good and layered. That’s what this book is:
delicious and good and layered and also incredibly fragmented. Like how a cake
crumbles when you bite into it? DOES THIS STILL WORK (DID IT EVER?) Whatever, I’m
running with it, leave me be.

The way this book is written felt kind of familiar. Which, oh God, again with the no sense. I mean,
Henshaw’s Australian, but the way he writes gives me the same sort of feeling I
got when I was reading – for example – Norwegian Wood. I mean I’m not comparing Henshaw to Murakami, or even this book to Murakami’s
work, it’s just that something about it felt familiar. I think it's perhaps something about the writing style; the imagery in this book, it’s
so subtle and yet at the same time it kind of smacks you in the face you know?
That, and the whole Japan
of it all. Anyway, there was this sense of familiarity that settled over me as I read it, and I liked that.The descriptions are stunning, and so very vivid, particularly
the parts of the book set in Japan.
Those are the parts I felt most engaged with, to the point that I almost wished
Jovert would go the same way as his almost-name-twin so that I could spend more time in Japan where the characters felt so real and
the descriptions were so colourful and there was this awesome correlation between descriptions
of like, nature and in fact the whole world Omura inhabited and the events that were
unfolding. I loved it.

I don't feel like I'm doing a very good job of this.

This book is a hard book to review. I don’t quite know what
to say about it, and that may well be because I am writing this review on almost
zero sleep. I think I should stop trying and say that basically, it’s clever
and it’s sort of poetic and it’s absolutely worth a read.

Today I
wish to talk about My Girl 2, mostly
because when I was looking for my Sense
and Sensibility DVD last week I came across My Girl and was hit with all the Vada Sultenfuss feels. I loved
that film, so hard, even though it broke my tiny little girl heart.

I never saw
the second film. I had the book though, because, well, bookworm and I read it so many times.

Everyone
knows My Girl, right? Vada Sultenfuss is an undertaker’s daughter, her Mum died
and her Dad is seeing someone new, she’s a total hypochondriac (growing up in a
funeral home would do that to a kid), has a crush on her teacher and is
terrified she killed her mother (who actually died in childbirth). She's a really cool kid, our Vada. I loved her, I wanted to be her friend.

Vada’s
best friends with this cute kid with glasses called Thomas J and it’s the
cutest friendship EVER IN THE WORLD. And then, he dies and it’s the worst.
Seriously, so much sad.

You say that line to anyone my age and I can pretty much bet you: instant teary eyes. SO MUCH SAD.

Anyway, My
Girl 2 picks up the story 2 years later: Vada’s stepmum is preggers, and Vada’s
still really missing Thomas J, and, she’s growing up. She always wanted to be a
writer more than anything but now she kind of just wants to be kissed. She heads off to visit her Uncle Phil in LA (we meet him in My Girl) and find out more about her
Mum. Which would be the best ever except her tour guide is Uncle Phil’s stepson
Nick, and he’s not the best, at all…..

Oh god,
doesn’t it just have pre-teen perfection written all over it??

I just, I
loved it. I wanted to be Vada, I did. & I remember thinking the whole
getting on a plane by yourself and flying all the way to LA sounded like the
coolest thing. I thought the whole book, all of it, just sounded so cool and so
many million miles away from my own life where there were no super cool dead
relatives and no cute boys to hatelove and no scorching hot summers. Plus there’s
the fact that I watched my video of My
Girl so many times that I felt like I knew Vada, I felt like she was my
friend and God, it wasn’t very often that I got to find out what happened to my
fave characters after the book had finished or the end credits rolled and
suddenly here it was: this look at Vada’s life, post Thomas J. I loved it, I
ate it up and I wanted more. I kept
wishing and hoping for a My Girl 3 and
making up stories in my head of what might have happened. It makes me wonder
actually, whether the part of me that’s always had those fangirl tendencies
began with My Girl.

Goodness gracious. How is it even mid April already? It’s my
Granny’s birthday today (happy 83rd Granny, thank you for being
excellent) and I plan to head over after work with a card and some flowers and
wish her Many Happy Returns before I head over to Helen’s for Chinese with her
and our other pal Clare. Marvellous. I see chicken in my future. I do so love chicken. The point of this post however is not my love for Chinese food or my Granny, but to talk about my March
Book Haul which OMG SO OVERDUE. I instagrammed a photo, because that’s how I
roll, but I never made a post, because currently I fail at life blogging. March and I were not friends.

I’m really amused actually, because in February I was all
‘ALL THE BOOKS’ and now looking at the size of my March haul, I realise that
February was rather meagre. April will be better, I swear. I say this knowing
full well that my birthday is this month and Jen already sent me a bookish
birthday package. *cue manic laughter*

If I talked at you about the delights of all these books we
would be here for all of time, so I’m not gonna. I’ll link you to them, in case
you want to buy your own copies, and I shall tell you a little bit about the
ones I am the most excited about and that will be that.

So, as detailed on that photo above, in March the following
books came to live on my already overflowing bookshelf:

Red Queen I received a review copy of and I'm super excited to read it because it sounds excellent. It's all about a world divided by blood - Red blood (commoners) and Silver blood (the super-powered elite) and a girl who doesn't fit into either box. yep, lemme at it.

The Rise and Fall of Great Powersis a rather pretty looking proof copy of a book that's all about identity and the idea of home and it sounds fabulous. I can't wait to read it.

Holy Smokes.

I am mostly looking forward I think to reading Mrs Hemingway
because Hemingway. That whole time just
fascinates me, and I’ve heard such good things about this book and just, I want to read it. I can't wait. I’m also super excited about Bobbi Lomax
which is all about cults and bombs and a prom queen and a
rare book dealer and sounds super cool and also Poison
purely because a: gimme all the fairy tales and b: I absolutely loved The Death House.

All of these books look awesome though, there's not one of them that I'm not a little giddy about and
probably you should check them all out.

It’s one of
those super exciting Fridays here today, because instead of me talking nonsense
about books and whatnot, the blog is being taken
over. Yup, that’s right, today’s post comes not from me (apart from this
bit, obvs,) but from the fabulous Jesobel Jones, star of Anna Mainwaring’s
novel The Lives and Loves of Jesobel
Jones. I’m thrilled to be a pit stop on this super fun blog tour, and am
absolutely a fan of Jesobel’s policy on cake, because, as I’m sure anyone who
reads this will agree, why would you not be? Girl talks sense.

So, let's talk a little bit about the book first shall we:

Summary

Jesobel Jones can bake. In a truly triumphant,
appearing-on-TV kind of way. But this means nothing to the rest of the world,
because apparently all that cake mix is starting to show – in all the wrong
places. So when she lands an invite to the Party of Year by the Boy of Her
Dreams, she wonders whether it’s time for a new, improved Jess. But will life
still taste as good?

Anna Mainwaring's debut is a light-hearted and
sometimes poignant take on the pressures that face teenage girls. It's hard to
smile in all those selfies when you don't like the girl who looks back at you.
But which is more important - looking perfect or being happy?

I know, you want to read it, right? & you can because it was published on March 25th (by Portal Press if you were interested) - if you want some more info then you can find it on Goodreads and Amazon. And with that, I shall leave you to read all about Jesobel's theories on The Joy of Cake.

The Joy of Cake: Why is cake important to
me.

By Jesobel Jones as told to Anna Mainwaring

Cake is a very important part of my life.
End of. What do you mean I have to explain more? Isn’t it completely obvious?
No?

Fine.

Well then, let’s start with one of the most
stupid expressions of all times. “You can’t have your cake and eat it.” I beg
your pardon.What kind of weird and
wonderful logic is that? What on earth is the point of cake if you can’t eat
it? What else are you supposed to do with it? Wear it as a hat? Use it a
navigational device? Build a rocket to the moon out of sponge and try to find
out whether said moon is made of green cheese?

No. That is not the
purpose of cake. Let’s be very clear here. Cake is for the following reasons:

1) For celebrations. Parties without cake are like parties
without friends. Pointless. And failing to fulfil the definition of the word
‘party’. Birthdays, anniversaries, even weddings, all focus round a cake. Okay,
you might decide that you don’t actually want any cake (a strange decision in
my book but I respect the rights of all in the world, cake lovers and non-cake
lovers) but you would EXPECT a cake to be there.

2) To cheer you up on a bad day. We all have them. Those days
which don’t match up to expectation. Those days when you don’t match up to
expectation. And those days when those around just let you down. What do you
reach for? A friend, a hug, a chat? All good things. But all of those things
could be improved by a slice of very lovely cake.

3) As expression of art. Okay, I know that sounds pretentious
but I take cake very seriously. Yes, some cakes are just vanilla cupcakes that
my baby sister Lauren could make. But there are also
cakes out there that are just things of beauty: a plate of perfect hued
macaroons; a pile of neatly constructed mille-fueille; profiteroles structured
to form a turret; sugar spun into the finest filigree. Cake can be basic; cake
can be complex. That is the Joy of Cake: it can be whatever you want or need it
to be.

4) A sign of friendship or love. Basically a cake is a hug in
the form of butter, flour, eggs and sugar. It means you care about someone
enough to make them something. I tried this recently when me and my friend Izzy
fell out. It didn’t quite go as planned but at least no one can say I didn’t
try.

5) Cake brings people together. You walk into a room. People
are spread around; no one is talking much; the mood is low. You bring out a
rather tasty looking cake. Voila! Those people, once sedentary, are now rushing
forward to eat the cake. They begin to talk to each other in excited tones.
They eat the cake and then begin to compare notes. The mere presence of cake
has transformed a boring room into something special. Cake seems to have almost
magical properties.

So that’s all the
amazing stuff about cake.Are there any
down sides? Can I eat all the cake I want all the time? Well you can but it’s
not really advisable. Whilst cake can and indeed should be a part of daily
life, I think I better follow the words of the Great Baking Goddess herself,
the one and only Queen Mary Berry. Look at her! She has spent her life making
and eating cakes. She’s in her eighties, looks amazing and is a national
treasure. She says she just has small slices every day. I personally prefer a
few big slices a few times a week but that’s what suits me. Like most things in
life you should do what makes you happy!

To conclude, cake
is one of life’s most reliable pleasures. Cake never lets you down. So don’t
listen to the cake haters, the no-carbers, the dieters, the calorie counters!
Join me in the great cake revolution and learn to appreciate The Joy of Cake.

Author Information

Anna Mainwaring first read ‘The Lord of the Rings’ when she was seven
and she hasn’t stopped reading since.

Her debut novel, “The Lives and Loves of Jesobel Jones”, follows Jess
through the joy and pain of being a teenager in the modern world; first love,
friendship, embarrassing families, and asks the big questions in life: how much
cake is it really acceptable to eat?

After studying English at university, Anna made the foolish decision to
work in corporate finance, not the best career choice for someone who a) is
number dyslexic b) hates anything corporate. After travelling, Anna re-trained
as an English teacher and works in a girls’ school in Cheshire. When not writing, teaching, or
looking after her children, Anna can generally be found walking up a big hill,
looking for inspiration.

I think it
was pretty much a given that I was going to love Jakob’s Colours. I mean, let’s be honest here, it ticks pretty much
all my boxes, all of them; everyone knows I love a book that makes my heart
hurt. Jakob’s Colours made my heart
hurt. I didn’t cry, but then I didn’t cry when I read The Book Thief either; it made me too sad to cry. This was kind of
the same thing, I had that kind of hollow feeling at the end, that weird kind
of emptiness that comes in part from the end of a book that you’ve just let absorb you and in part from the fact
that said book has made you feel too many things to really know what to do
with. I didn’t start another book as soon as I finished this one, like I would normally. I kind of
just needed some time.

Jakob’s Colours is set for the most part in Austria in 1944
and is about Jakob, a little gypsy boy, running like his father told him to do,
running because he still just about can, although he has nowhere to run to and
is unable to feel anything really, but fear. Jakob’s father told him not to be afraid, to
see the colours, and Jakob does, so brightly that it almost hurts your eyes.

Mixed in with Jakob’s story we get ‘Before’ when Jakob and his Mother and his brother
and sister are lost and alone and hiding and searching for his father and we
get ‘Long Before’ where we see Jakob’s
mother growing up in England, the events that result in her being sent to an
asylum where she meets Jakob’s father (a gypsy boy) and how they manage,
despite the odds being stacked against them, to build their life together, interspersed with little bits where the family is together that leave you with a knot in your tummy and all of it,
it’s all kinds of beautiful. This Day, Before, Long Before, all of it, it’s
just stunning; it goes backwards and forwards, from this time to that with a
pace that leaves you breathless, as breathless as Jakob is, as he runs.

In the
present day Jakob meets Markus – you need to be prepared for that. You just,
you really do. If you’ve read The Book
Thief then I’m just going to say to you Liesel and Max and leave it at
that, because whilst this is in no way the same, the relationship between these
two characters invokes the same sort of all-encompassing hurty feeling that you
don’t quite know how to express.

In a
complete contrast to the hollow feeling I got at the end – the last 40 pages or
so sat heavy on my chest and although the ending didn’t surprise me, it winded
me all the same. STAMP ON MY HEART WHY DON’T YOU LINDSAY HAWDON (I love you) – the whole book was
infused with a weird kind of heart, like, it was constantly heartbreaking but
not always despairing. Does that make sense? Let me try and explain what I mean. Bad stuff happens in this book, it’s
about a holocaust, let’s not be naïve,
bad stuff happens and it tears you apart but it’s kind of balanced out by the
other stuff, by the beauty, by the colours, by the love. The thing is, I’m not
sure if that balance is a good thing, I mean it’s a good thing, but from the point of view of my fragile emotional
state perhaps not so much because when Markus is so unbelievably tender to
Jakob, when his Mother wraps herself around him at night, when his Father tells
him see the colours, my boy, well I’m
not entirely convinced that all of that tenderness doesn’t make the hard stuff
harder.

This is a
book that is full of colour and full of faith and wonder and it hurts. It
opened my eyes to gypsy life and culture, and to the gypsy holocaust, which we
hear so little about when really we should because, I don’t know, because it matters. They mattered. Up to 1.5million gypsies were killed by 1945
and it went unrecognised until 1982. Just, how? It blows my mind in the worst
way possible that just when you think WWII can’t have been any worse, you find
out something new and horrific and so terrible you can barely believe it
happened at all, except it did and you have to believe it because to not, to shy
away, is to do the memory of those people a disservice.

Jakob's Colours is incredibly beautifully written, the characters so real they made me ache, the
descriptions so vivid, and the emotions so raw and honest. This is a book that
is going to matter, it’s a book that’s going to open eyes and raise questions
and it’s book that should, really, win All The Awards. I didn’t enjoy it
because it’s not the kind of book you enjoy, but I loved it. Also, I don’t know
what the finished cover looks like, but the proof copy is so damn beautiful
good gracious.

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About

A bookworm in her mid-30's who likes sunshine and snow covered mountains and the cold side of the pillow and being the little spoon. Writes book reviews more akin to coffee with friends than any intellectual book club. Binge watcher who has been known to use holiday days to stay in her pyjamas under a blanket watching Ugly Betty and who thinks nothing will ever be as sad as Billy on Ally McBeal although some things come close. Does not believe in the term guilty pleasures - you do you, you gorgeous creature. A happy, sleepy, over-thinker.

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“He said, "I'm going to use that in something one day." And he wrote it down on a napkin and put it in his back pocket...

About Me

Josephine. Mid-30’s (still not sure how to adult). Bookworm. Lover of coffee and marmite and pad thai. Hardly ever eats breakfast. Has too many copies of Alice in Wonderland. Also loves skiing and the sea and road-trips and laughter. Terrified of wasps.
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